


Lines on Paper

by theoreticalpixy



Category: Captain America (2011), The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Gen, art fic, pre avengers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-26
Updated: 2012-05-26
Packaged: 2017-11-06 01:40:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,107
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/413312
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theoreticalpixy/pseuds/theoreticalpixy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve tries to draw for the first time after waking up.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lines on Paper

**Author's Note:**

> so basically I helped samalander with some fic and she ended up infecting me with her Steve feels.

There’s a moment of panic before he starts. It’s deep in the pit of his stomach and sizzles straight through his fingertips, a horrible moment of doubt.

What if he can’t anymore? What if his fingers have forgotten? Too many hours of fighting overriding the other knowledge.

What if it looks terrible?

His palms are sweaty, he wipes them on his pants and picks the pencil up. The white expanse of the paper glares at him for a second. Pristinely white and just waiting for him to make a mistake as his pencil hovers over the surface. Well he didn’t come this far to back down.

He starts to draw.

Lead on paper, this was something he knew. Something he knew before he was Captain America, before the war, before the ice and the new world he should have been an old man in. Before everything. Doodling in margins and getting reprimanded in school. Drawing in the few art classes he managed, lectures on form and light and shadow, how to carve out shape from nothing. Marks on paper to create something. That he gets.

It’s halting, slow at first, as he works on the underlying structure. The pencil feels strange in his hand but his arm still knows this. Still has the memory buried somewhere deep down. There’s a lot of eraser in-between the strokes but then there’s an echo of one of the few teachers he had saying ‘Erase everything, don’t be precious. Get rid of what you love. If you’re drawing around it you should erase it.’

He hadn’t liked the advice at the time but he thinks he understands it more in retrospect. Accepts it. It’s okay to erase, it’s okay to start over, it’s part of the process. It give the drawing history, he thought as he rubbed out a line that was too dark to go away fully. It stains the paper, a curve where he pushed too hard indenting the surface. It’s all history he reminds himself.

And Steve Rogers, well he had a lot of history. So maybe his drawings should too.

His hand gets more sure as he redraws the section. He presses harder and lets the marks darken as he works his way around. There’s some effort, the paper and pencil combination aren’t quite what he was used to but it only takes a few moments of trial and error to get the marks he likes. A familiar confidence grows as he works, his strokes becoming more daring.

It blurs from there. Not that he forgets what happens, no, he knows each decision he makes, eyes darting to and from his subject. He knows he’s probably biting his lip when he’s unsure and he knows he should sit up straighter before he puts a kink in his shoulder but he doesn’t care. He’s drawing; it’s working. He wants it to keep working. He’ll stretch out when he’s finished.

It’s everything else that blurs. Everything not in his micro focus of this drawing melts away. That alone is a triumph, even if the end product isn’t his best, just getting back to that mindset is worth it.

He’d honestly been worried he couldn’t.

He forgets for precious minutes that everyone he knew is gone. That when SHIELD says he missed 70 years it’s more like he lost them. Lost everything, and nothing SHIELD says is going to bring back his world. He has to start over.

Steve erases another line.

It’s been three weeks from the first itch of wanting a pencil in hand to finally sitting down and doing this. First he had, had to get the materials. And then they sat on his dresser for four days taunting him and then they spent another three hidden in a drawer so he wouldn’t have to look at them until he finally gave in. Until the boredom and frustration over everything finally peaked and he just had to.

The last time he drew - actually drew, not just doodled or got interrupted before he started was…well a really long time ago. He managed a little on the early end of the USO tours. Not much. Sometimes he drew little things for the couple chorus girls he made friends with and he wonders if Jan’s fiance came home safe from the front and she got to have the three kids she wanted. If Ellie ever made to Hollywood. More names he has to ask about.

It all itched at him until he’d finally given in. So he’d pulled together a still life from the ephemera of the unfamiliar apartment. He’d dragged his bedside table to the living area and arranged what bits he could. There’s a weird bird knick knack and the bedside lamp has a nice shape to it and he grabs a bowl from the kitchenette but doesn’t fill it with anything.

Now there’s an image on the paper of them as well. He exaggerates the darks and redraws the curve of the lamp stand so many times he loses count. It’s not something brilliant, or some amazing best work of his, but it’s A Drawing.

And hell if that doesn’t feel like the closest thing to home since he’s woken up.

The light starts slipping down in the sky and his hand moves faster. There’s smudges gathering on his hands and he works to lay in the darks and pull out the highlight with the eraser. He brushes his hair back and doesn’t bother to check if he’s got graphite on his face. He has to finish.

Steve leans back, checking it, eyes darting back and forth to check, measuring and judging as his light is dying. He dives in one more time, hand darting across the surface of the paper adding short, quick marks. Defining an edge here, darkening there, small adjustments to bring it out.

The breath he lets out is heavy and relieved. His hand settles and he sits back a little straighter, eyes tight on the paper. It’s done. Steve runs a hand through his hair, and his shoulders slouch just a little. He doesn’t close the sketchbook right away. He likes what he’s made and lets it sit out as he rises and starts to disassemble the still life. Each piece gets put back exactly where it came from.

The world settles back in around him as he walks around the apartment flipping more lights on. Pieces slotting back together as he shakes the haze off. He stretches a little, grabs a glass of water and maybe, just maybe, this whole mess feels the tiniest bit less suffocating in the aftermath.


End file.
